IS MY CHILD GIFTED CHECKLIST HOW TO

gifted” form, while a seemingly easy way to communicate the population of interest in gifted education, also has many characteristics more commonly observed in students from dominant cultural groups. Without such evidence, those who deny a service to an otherwise needy and interested child (one who is “just” bright) seem, at best, conflicted or at worst, needlessly discriminatory-an accusation the field can do without. gifted” if the students are otherwise the same in what they need from their school or teacher? And, perhaps most importantly, what gifted education interventions can we say with confidence that only “truly gifted” students will benefit from whereas “just bright” students will not? If we had such evidence then the distinction between bright and gifted would be a worthy endeavor as we don’t want to provide students with an intervention if it will not be beneficial based on their observed needs.

Now the million dollar question: What is gained by first diagnosing giftedness as opposed to moving straight from the observation of an unmet need, using multiple objective and subjective measures, to providing more challenging material? Even if we accept that there is a true distinction between bright children and gifted children and that such a distinction can be measured effectively, which is difficult to support based on the research literature, what is educationally helpful about the distinction of “bright vs. Meanwhile the “bright” child returns to the grade level classroom where she remains under challenged. Based on the checklist, the one who is deemed to be gifted then receives several additional rounds of testing (to confirm giftedness) and, if she is found to be truly gifted, she then receives an appropriately challenging intervention. Option #2: You go home and spend some time trying to decide if one of the students is gifted whereas the other is just bright. Option #1 : You provide them both with a more challenging course of study in line with the students’ demonstrated skill areas and then check in frequently to make sure they both remain challenged and engaged or

IS MY CHILD GIFTED CHECKLIST HOW TO

You must now choose how to proceed between two options: All of the evidence you have about these students (e.g., test scores, personal observations) points them toward needing more challenging material. You’ve had a chance to get to know them both and believe they are both being under challenged in school. Both prefer working with others who are at their academic level and have similar interests and both can handle a high degree of independent work. Both ask good, probing questions and draw connections to other topics in a way that shows they are both far more advanced than most of their grade-level peers.

Both are very interested in the topic you are about to teach and have already mastered much of what you were going to cover over the next several weeks. Let’s imagine for a moment that two identical children walk into your classroom (you playing the role of teacher). gifted is emblematic of many of the challenges facing the field of gifted education. The distinction of whether a child is bright vs. This case exemplifies what appears to be one of the form’s most common uses-as a means to deny services to a particular student despite overwhelming evidence that the child is under challenged in school.

A few years ago, a senior scholar in the field of gifted education, was handed the form as a rationale for why his kindergartener (who was already reading chapter books) was not eligible for gifted services. In other words, if two children are otherwise identical in their level of achievement, aptitude, creativity, and so on, they should still be treated differently if one is “truly” gifted and one is “just” bright. The overall suggestion seems to be that as a teacher or even as an educational system, educationally useful information comes from knowing if one of your students is “just bright” as opposed to being “truly” gifted. It is included in formal district gifted education plans and even posted to state department of education websites with the implicit endorsement of it and its key distinction as best practice. This checklist seems to be one of the most ubiquitous publications related to gifted education. It seems to have first appeared in a 1989 article by Janice Szabos in Challenge Magazine, but was likely around in similar forms long before that. Any educator or parent who has interacted with the field of gifted and talented education has probably come across the “bright vs.

Is my child gifted checklist